Who knew the final boss of the entire Dark Souls series would be a super sad uncle? Slave Knight Gael represents the downtrodden, a person who, through endless trials and agony beneath the corrupt rule of the Lothric royalty holds onto the hope of a new beginning. Off to find the Dark Soul pigment in the ringed city, his journey precedes your own, marked by the occasional Gael phantom encouraging you to “take the plunge” into a soft pile of ash below. The pigment is all his niece needs to paint a new world for man, free from the cycle of fire. It sounds too good to be true and it’s Gael’s adherence to the belief it is true that makes him such an admirable dude.

Shame we have to kill him, really. He’s the Old Yeller of Dark Souls, a sympathetic character gone mad, but instead of a shed we take him out to the precipice of an era for one of the best boss fights in the series and an appropriate close to an otherwise inconsistent final act.

After a massive jump forward in time, we find Gael as a violent, disillusioned version of his former self, killing every living thing that might get him closer to finding the pigment. He mirrors the player’s journey through space and time and toil to find the titular series MacGuffin, but more so he represents the best of Dark Souls boss design, a pure distillation of everything great about the combat. 

Fun-damentals 

The bigger a Dark Souls boss, the more frustrating they are to fight, generally. Big usually implies a beastly form with knotty limbs and billowing wings. Size is always impressive, but strange anatomies make big bosses harder to track, especially once they start moving and swinging and shooting lasers out of some hidden hole. When locking on, the camera either centers on their mass and pulls you under their legs, where other limbs crowd the foreground and make precision attacks and evades nearly impossible. The process of learning the behavior and capabilities of a given monster piles on the trial and error necessary to understand them. Studying monstrous bosses can be fun and might eventually give way to a well-designed fight beneath a pile of your dead bodies (Ludwig from Bloodborne comes to mind), it’s just the initial buffer stage of parsing what’s in front of you that can feel unfair. Imagine starting up a round of Street Fighter 2, only to come up against a purple abyssal dragon.

Dark Souls’ combat system is at its least frustrating when fighting human figures. You can stay locked on, you know they’re wielding weapons and magic or a combination of both, and you know—roughly—what the attacks might look like. In that way, Gael’s silhouette is immediately familiar. The very first enemy you face in the first Dark Souls is a shambling undead human figure and your character’s only weapon is a broken short sword bearing a striking resemblance to Gael’s own chipped and rusted blade.

There’s no hesitation to fight the guy: it’s just you two on the edge of existence, swinging swords. An intuitive final fight means there’s less time taking mental notes on bizarre attack patterns, and more time feeling the thrill of the fight and speculating about how Gael ended up so powerful and pitiful at once. Character and mechanics collide to make that sad, exciting Dark Souls stew so many love.

It’s still hard, of course, but like a Guitar Hero song on expert, you get to play a series of increasingly complex chords progressions before the blazing solo.

Stabbing lessons 

Gael’s most challenging traits come from a slow, clear progression of attacks added to the fight at distinct intervals. There’s no surprise second health bar accompanied by a completely different phase and moveset, and no additional foes show up to sneak in off camera or force you to repeatedly find your lock-on. The lock-on actually composes some beautiful shots, following Gael as he dashes around you or rolls and slams from above. 

The angles frame him and the player against the ashen plain in a way that looks like an showdown from an old western, giving you ample time to admire the art direction while fighting for your life. Gael is all you need to focus on, with his supplemental attacks easy to keep track of in your periphery.

When Gael’s health is two-thirds full or so, a cutscene plays out, giving the player a chance to breathe and take in the mad uncle’s new upright posture. Gael’s moveset is largely the same, augmented with a scarlet flame effect from his cloak on his bigger swings, a repeating crossbow, and the Way of the White Corona spell attack.

Way of the White Corona is the first method for teaching positioning in relation to Gael his AoE spell effects, while reinforcing precise dodge-rolling skills. When he uses it, Gael fires off a cluster of white boomerang projectiles. With good timing, your dodge-roll’s invincibility frames allow you to roll toward him without taking damage, and because the projectiles eventually return to their point of origin, you’re taught to stay aware of where they were fired off in the first place. Otherwise they’ll catch you in the back, sometimes chaining into one of Gael’s deadlier combos.

In Gael’s third phase, he gets some AoE lightning spells and explosive spectral skull attacks that make use of the lessons taught by those magic boomerangs. By paying attention to the edge of your vision, the black spots where lighting is set to strike stand out against the ashen landscape, and you’re not penalized instantly for stepping on them. They detonate in order of appearance, and if you’re locked onto Gael, chances are you’ll be maneuvering around him, which is a good chance to take in your surroundings for a quick mental mapping.

As extensions of existing skill checks, the additions don’t fundamentally change how you fight, they just turn up the intensity. Swings have more reach with the scarlet cape flame, so your dodges need to be slightly more precise and the flame’s far reach punishes players that hang back for too long. They come faster too, which further tests timing and stamina management. Crossbow attacks are thrown into the mix for casters and archers, telegraphed well ahead of time by Gael’s stance (and the big fucking crossbow he whips out). They’re best dodged by sprinting, a skill that hasn’t been necessary throughout the battle so far. The new attacks don’t require changing strategies entirely, just stretching existing ones to their limit.

As relentless as his attacks become, Gael’s health isn’t infinitely large and doesn’t regenerate. Rather, his attacks become more consequential, diverse, and swift. The difficulty in fighting him isn’t gotcha trickery, it’s punishment for failing to keep up with his gently ballooning moveset. And if you keep up with the gradual schooling without getting schooled, the result is a rhythmic fight that requires use of every skill at your disposal. It’s truly difficult, but when everything comes together, fighting Gael feel effortless. 

Even better than victory, the truest gratification is in reflection, seeing gulf between where your capabilities start and end up. To anyone watching, you’ll look like Mozart, if Mozart was known for how good he could somersault and stab sad uncles.

But the adrenaline and self-gratification quickly evaporate. After finishing Gael off there’s no closing cutscene, no credits sequence—only the notice that the final heir of fire has been destroyed and the last bonfire appears, a soft glow in a desert of ash. Whether you return to his niece and deliver her the Dark Soul pigment is up to you, and even then, all that’s left is a soft prayer for a new world. All that’s left is to close the game and leave the series behind. Dark Souls’ last boss never gets the final hit he worked so hard for, and it still hurts.

Despite the fact some Dark Souls players can take down its toughest bosses scantily clad, at Souls Level 1, and on New Game Plus 7, The Ringed City DLC is easily one of the series' trickiest outings. With this in mind, its latest update 1.32 installs a number of buffs and nerfs which should aid faltering players—not least by toning down those blasted lighting-spewing angels of the Dreg Heap. 

Many enemies have brought me close to tears throughout my Dark Souls career, and the angels of the Dreg Heap rank high among them. If their relentless showers of light arrow attacks didn't finish me off on umpteen occasions, their twinkling showers of curse magic did. 

If you're on a similar (sinking) boat, you'll be pleased to know the latest adjustments tone down the light arrows' damage, and the Hidden Body sorcery now effectively hides you from their onslaught too.

Elsewhere, the PvP Spear of the Church boss fight has been tinkered with so that damage absorption is less during 1v2, 1v3 and 1v4 games, while this run in's homing speak damage has also been lowered. 

On the player logistics side of things, increased damage and scaling of simple, crystal, fire, chaos, lightning, dark, deep and blessed infusions has been enacted, with the same applying to raw infusions. Reduced scaling has however been applied to heavy infusions on lighter weapons and the Exile Greatsword is now less powerful. 

Dark Souls 3's update 1.32 is out now. The full list of its changes can be found via this Steam community post.

YouTuber TolomeoR went for a nice jog through Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City the other day. On their way they did some aerobics and took a little break to kill an ancient dragon. Relaxing, simple stuff. Darkeater Midir is the hardest boss of the DLC (and most of Dark Souls 3 for a good chunk of players) built to thwart easy co-op exploits and fast enough to give series vets a nice clap across the cheek. 

But with an inordinate amount of patience, TolomeoR found a jogging route around Midir’s scaly paws and dark laser breath. They make it look effortless, which is infuriating. I kicked over a pile of books trying to beat Midir. Now my paperback copy of Moby Dick has a bent corner and I still haven’t bested The Ringed City’s own white whale with such finesse. 

In the video description, TolomeoR details the strategy, stating that it’s not exactly foolproof. Some attacks trigger randomly, a few of which cannot be avoided by trotting away, but with enough attempts Midir will stick to the basic swiping moves, all of which can be dodged with 100% less effort than I employed. That’s Dark Souls for you: tricking players into making mountains out of molehills through theatrics. With a cool head (and a nude bod), anything is possible. 

Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City rushes through the series' history like an unhinged amusement park ride. It's excessively punishing, even by Dark Souls standards, and unusually straightforward, with a flat, linear design that doesn’t leave much room for exploration or inspire curiosity. Full of haunting landscapes and with a few exhilarating (and some infuriating) fights, it’s more Dark Souls, but not the fitting end the series deserves. With some of the worst level and encounter design of the series, The Ringed City blows by its dreary themes and thin story beats by constantly pushing the player towards an inevitable, obvious conclusion.  

If Dark Souls 3 tried to close the loop on the series, The Ringed City attempts to erase it. Mankind has prolonged their age too long through lighting a sacred fire time and time again, and in doing so the universe’s life energy is running low. All of time and space is converging towards a single point, a city created long before the events of the original Dark Souls. That’s where you’re headed, to unclog a spacetime drain, where the series’ mysteries pile up like tangled hair. 

Level decline 

The early environments are a literal descent through Dark Souls history, starting with imagery from Dark Souls 3, onto Dark Souls 2, and finally the original Dark Souls, before moving on to some completely new spaces. The sudden realization that the ground beneath your character is actually a familiar facade, tipped over, is surprising the first few times. The twisted landscapes are as captivating as ever and kept my eyes busy looking for familiar sights, but none of it is used to tell a new story or wrap up old threads. While previous environments in Dark Souls contained short narratives, The Dreg Heap is a drag: the slowest, saddest apocalypse event I’ve seen in a game and not much else.

As slow and quiet as the environmental design is, The Ringed City is the most linear, hurried Dark Souls design yet. In The Dreg Heap, massive angelic creatures force new methods of play that Dark Souls wasn’t built for. They spit out barrages of light that can kill you in a few hits, and while dashing between cover or trying to creep by are interesting the first few times, the penalty for failing to discover the developer’s intended path is always death. There’s little time to observe the level for secrets or consider which route to take forward when stepping out of cover for more than 20 seconds kills you. There are ways to take out the angels permanently, but the methods are hidden deep within each section and took me a few suicide sprints to discover.

Later on, an even more frustrating enemy shows up with the ability to summon dozens of long range damage dealers at once. Dark Souls combat is at its best when you can poke and prod and observe an enemy before they absolutely obliterate you, but The Ringed City’s enemies force dangerous sprints through narrow corridors before dumping you out into an open area where they throw everything at you at once. I wanted to stop and take in the bleak and beautiful vistas, to study the statuary, and look high and low for NPCs, but nearly everything in The Ringed City pushed me forward.

Even the more traditional enemies are too much sometimes. I met one of the hardest combatants right at the beginning of the DLC, expecting to see them again, paired with other enemies creative ways. I didn’t expect to fight six of the fat treemen in a row on a stairwell, which amounted to six of the same, prolonged encounters. They’re fun to fight one on one, but crowded together I either died instantly in a flurry of quick attacks or had to kite them to another room one at a time. 

The encounter wasn’t set up to teach me anything new and the enemies weren’t designed to fight in crowds. Later on, I found out I could drop down from a bridge onto their heads for an instant kill. I didn’t have to get good, I just had to press a button in the right place at the right time. Where’s the intrinsic reward in that? The Ringed City is full of similar instances where crowds of enemies are meant to equate difficulty, even if they’re not fun to fight.

Thematically and visually, the new enemies are fascinating, but they’re often set up in a way that makes avoiding them more rewarding than direct confrontation.

Boss prattles 

FromSoftware doesn’t get too creative or fix old problems with the new bosses, but the four included are a highlight reel of archetypes from the entire series. One boss feels designed for co-op play, another utilizes PvP covenants in a refreshing way (invite a co-op buddy, too—the more the merrier), one actively punishes co-op play with its sheer size, and another is a near perfect one-on-one encounter, a boss who communicates their moveset and escalates at a perfect pace. It’s one of my favorite fights in the series, moreso given the setting and narrative context. Prepare for sadness. 

The usual criticisms apply to the bigger bosses, though. They’re still too big to track, especially when you’re close up, and some of them have excessively large health pools. By the time I mastered their movesets, there was still the matter of spending the next 10 to 20 minutes chipping away at a gargantuan health bar. Exhilaration quickly gives way to tedium, especially when a dopey slip up means starting over. 

Some tedium can be alleviated through experimentation with all the new items The Ringed City has hidden away. Powerful rings typically saved for New Game Plus are scattered around, about as friendly a nod as Dark Souls can give. The new weapons have creative weapon arts, including a dagger that extends into a magical lightsaber and two massive swords with a brutal mid-range throw attack. There’s even a shield literally made of two doors. Slap them together and nearly nothing can hurt you, so long as you have the strength to wield them. The PvP meta tends to be pretty prescriptive, but the new weapons are sure to shake things up a bit.

Weapon upgrade materials drop from enemies like candy from an overstuffed pinata, which means I can safely diverge from the armaments that I’m most comfortable with and upgrade whatever I like without fear of running out. It’s also sure to be a welcome change for avid PvP players that want to min-max builds at specific soul levels without running through new-game-plus over and over again. As a PvE player, I’m glad I can upgrade my entire arsenal over time, even if I can’t decrypt Dark Souls’ disorganized narrative.

Analyzed for its story alone, The Ringed City is an incoherent mess. Lore hunters will find new names and locations to build theories around, but theories are all they’ll ever be. Slave Knight Gael and the Painting Woman are the only characters that get somewhat complete arcs, and they were only just introduced in Ashes of Ariandel. I’m OK with no answers about the greater Dark Souls lore, but for anyone expecting to find a keystone of vital lore intel to tie it all together will be massively disappointed.

At times the difficulty and dreary landscapes are enough, but overall The Ringed City was one hell of a soft note for Dark Souls to go out on. As a surface level thematic experience, the finale is a fitting way to end the series, leaving the faintest glimmer of hope amidst all the ash. I had fun descending through a visual collage of the series’ history—it's much more interesting than Ashes of Ariandel—and I can appreciate the symbolic significance of its ending, but this is Dark Souls design at its most uninspired.

In an expansion called The Ringed City, it makes sense that rings would be the best loot hidden about. Normally, you need to play New Game Plus to get +3 rings in Dark Souls 3, but in latest DLC, they’re hidden all over the place. If you’re looking to earn a boatload more souls or increase your equip load, don’t miss out. You’re just a ring or two away from never fat-rolling in Smough’s armor ever again. 

Ring of Steel Protection +3 

You’ll find this ring early on in The Dreg Heap. Right where you meet the first angelic butterfly, a walkway runs around a building just before a cathedral where you’ll battle two knights. Feel free to make a suicide run around the walkway while the angelic butterfly is still alive, but eliminating the butterfly by attacking its root just beyond the cathedral is much easier. This ring increases your physical damage absorption, and in a game where you take plenty of physical damage, that sounds like a pretty good deal.

Ring of Favor +3 

When you enter the swamp area in The Dreg Heap for the first time, you’ll find the Ring of Favor on a tree root directly across the way. This ring increases your max HP, max stamina, and max equip load. I never take it off.

Wolf Ring +3 

This ring is located near one of the longest and most arduous stretches of the game, just near Shira’s door (she’s the one that asks you to defeat that bigass purple dragon). Head across the bridge where all the lightning wielding enemies are and through the passage beyond. Defeat the Ringed Knight and head all the way to the back. The Seeker of the Spurned should invade. Kill them and they’ll drop the Wolf Ring +3, which gives a +9 to your poise stat—good for PvP. I wasn’t recording when I found it, but this YouTube demonstration from Massive Trigger will show you the way.

Havel’s Ring +3 

This awesome equip load buff is hiding near the Ringed City Streets bonfire. To the left of the main stairs first leading into the swampy streets, you’ll find a ladder. Climb up, head right, and into the tower. Dark Spirit Ledo will spawn, so take them out first for some good loot, then as you drop down on the ledges outside the door you first entered the tower from, Havel’s Ring will be waiting. BeardBear’s video will show you the way.

Covetous Silver Serpent Ring +3 

From The Dreg Heap bonfire, head down, down, down, until just beyond the small cathedral where two knights are praying. From the only way out, take a right and head up. A ton of murk knights will spawn, so you’re better off running past them. In the final room, slash at the left wall to reveal a hidden passage and continue running. At the top room, take a left and knock the ladder down for easy access in the future. Chances are you’re about to get bombed by five murk knights’ humanity attacks. Just beyond them is a walkway leading outside. Head to the end and drop down to the balcony below to grab the ring. It increases the amount of souls gained from defeating enemies. Time to power level.

Covetous Gold Serpent Ring +3 

From the same ladder you used to get to Havel’s Ring, head up the stairs and for left instead of right. You’ll have to fight two Ringed Knights, but I just kite them off the ledge toward the Havel Ring tower to get them out of the way. Head across the bridge, but be wary of some cursed minions. They build that junk up fast. Once the way is safe, head to the end of the path and into the lone room at the end. The ring is inside. In this clip, Lapp is there as I already grabbed the ring. Equipping it increases the chance for enemies to drop items.

Ring of the Evil Eye +3 

Find this ring just down the stairs from the Shared Grave bonfire. You likely passed it earlier, but one of the annexes in the massive circular building has a chest sitting inside. It looks a bit newer than anything around it. Maybe you should kill this chest, just in case. The Ring of the Evil Eye is waiting inside. It gives you small bits of health back for damage done to enemies.

Cloranthy Ring +3 

From the Ringed City Inner Wall bonfire, head down the elevator beyond the locked door. It’s a shortcut you’ll need to unlock just beyond the Shared Grave bonfire. As you head down, get ready to roll into a doorway halfway through your descent.

Dark Souls 3: The Ringed City is a much bigger expansion than Ashes of Ariandel, and it has a few surprises up its billowing sleeves that you might struggle to find. One of those is a hidden boss who'd be better off staying hidden, if you ask me. My pride as a Dark Souls expert is gone at this point. It’s definitely one of the harder fights in the game. 

To get there, you’ll need to be a good chunk of the way through the DLC, so turn back if you’re worried about spoilers. 

From the Shared Grave bonfire, head across the bridge and take care of the ‘problem’ if you haven’t already. Head upstairs and look right to find the Ringed City Wall elevator shortcut. Halfway through, you’ll need to jump into a doorway that passes by. I recommend heading all the way up to unlock the door to the Ringed City Wall bonfire first. If you die, and you definitely will, it’s going to be home base for all your attempts. 

Once you disembark in the elevator shaft, go left and head down the stairs. You’ll enter a circular room lined with statues. Swing at the statue immediately to the right of the glowing loot to reveal a hidden path. Continue down the stairs and head down the ladder. Things are about to go down (ha ha—but really, you need to go down some more).

Pick up the items and summon help if you’re feeling nervy. From here, you’ll just need to drop down into the deep, dark hole at the far back of the room. The rest is all you. Best of luck, Ashen One.

The first boss in The Ringed City, the final DLC for Dark Souls 3, feels like it was designed to be a co-op battle. You face off against two giant flying demons, the Demon in Pain and the Demon from Below, and after taking those two out, one morphs into The Demon Prince for a final, prolonged showdown. But if you’re a stubborn Souls player and must finish everything on your own (and I understand), here’s what to keep in mind when taking on the final demons. 

Phase one: The Twin Demons 

The first phase is all about spatial awareness. One demon is always aggressive and glowing orange, coming at you with a few swiping and leaping attacks that are all telegraphed well ahead of time. Dodge-roll like you were born to. Just keep in mind that the other demon is hanging back and puking up toxic clouds this whole time and chances are, if you’re not paying enough attention, his toxic puke attacks will intersect with where you’re dodge-rolling. Their toxic attacks are also telegraphed with animations and sound and well ahead of time. Mostly, they’re meant to be a distraction from the aggressive demon coming your way. If you don’t trust yourself to keep track of that jerk in the back, equip some toxic-resist rings and bring plenty of Blooming Purple Moss Clumps, just in case.

From here, it’s a test of skill. By now, you should have your invincibility frame window for dodge-rolling down, so observe the aggressive demon’s fairly simple move set—he swipes and charges—and respond appropriately. Take a swing or two between attacks, back off, and observe again. As always, getting overzealous in Dark Souls will be the reason most folks die. With enough consecutive hits to the face, you can stun the big bats and go in for a critical hit that does a ton of damage and knocks them over for more.

At some point, the aggressive demon will exhaust their power, their orange glow will fade, and they’ll start puking toxic fumes too. When this happens, the other demon will light up shortly after, becoming orange and angry while their bro takes a breather. Swapping places doesn’t do much to change up the fight other than to encourage you to focus on whatever health bar has been depleted the most so far. If you think you can keep track of the aggressive demon while finishing off the toxic demon, go for it, but I’d just stick to whatever rhythm you’re most comfortable in. This fight can go on for a long, long time, as you’ll soon find out.

Phase two: The Demon Prince 

Oh cool! A new life bar appears once you take out the two demons, a battle which is already as difficult as any from the main game. Now you need to kill The Demon Prince, who doesn’t behave very princely. This bigger, more fiery bat likes to fly and leap all around the arena, which makes him hard to keep up with. Even when he's vulnerable after a move for a hit or two, the prince is probably on the other side of the cavern. Distance shouldn’t be too much of an issue, so long as you learn to read the prince’s attacks to predict their position.

Meteor shower - When you get close, sometimes the prince looks up and wails, summoning a few molten boulders fall from the sky. They fall slowly and if you know they’re coming, just back off and strafe, but don’t run away. The prince will rest, giving you a short window to attack.

Divebomb - When the prince flies up, he’ll wind up and dive down, leaving a trail of fire in its wake. Dodge out of the way and sprint to where the prince lands. He rests for a second or two, leaving him open to attack.

Fire spheres - The prince will cup his hands and summon two balls of fire that spit smaller fireballs at you. He prince likes to leap backwards after summoning the balls, which pushes out a gust of air that can knock you on your bottom. Give chase, but don’t stand still and avoid approaching directly. Zig-zag, dodge roll a bit, and make your way to the prince, who will likely take a few swipes at you, leaving him open for a few hits of your own.

This GIF demonstrates what not to do.

Fireballs - If the prince cups one hand and summons a single fireball, he's about to hop into the air and toss it your way. Advice: don’t get hit. The sphere doesn’t move super fast, so don’t jump the gun on that dodge roll too soon.

The greatest challenge in this long fight is patience. The Demon Prince’s inflated health bar and inability to stand still means each attempt can take upwards of 10 minutes as you dip and dodge around every fire attack, chipping away all the while.

Still need help?

There's always something else to try:

You can summon the NPC Lapp on the ledge right before dropping into the arena.

You can also summon NPC Slave Knight Gael at the bonfire right before the arena.

Upgrade those weapons. Enemies in The Ringed City are Titanite pinatas. 

Just summon some co-op friends. Praise the sun. What else is it there for?

Prior to its release this week, Dark Souls 3's second and final offering of DLC—The Ringed City—was thought to be the action role-player series' curtain call. From Software president Hidetaka Miyazaki has now all but confirmed this in an upcoming interview with Japanese publication Famitsu. 

Translated by Twitter user Black Kite (via wccftech), Miyazaki tells Famitsu that the Dark Souls series is completely finished as of The Ringed City add-on "at least for now". Miyazaki also says he and From Software "don't have any future plans for it" looking ahead. 

While this underscores the fact The Ringed City is the end of the line for the series, Miyazaki does concede he hasn't implemented everything he'd hope to and while not perfect believes the series is "blessed". 

Looking to the future, Miyazaki says he's working on a "number of games that should be interesting", however isn't concerned if they mirror the Souls games or not.

So what's next, then? Might we see Bloodborne on PC, or perhaps From Software returning to the Armored Core series? Your guess is as as good as mine—share it in the comments below.   

There's a feeling I get whenever I fire up a Souls game for the first time that no other videogame gives me. It's a lovely gut-wrenching blend of excitement, fear and anxiety wrought by the thought of exploring new fantastical and awe-inspiring locales—all the while knowing I'll be stalked by whichever grotesque entourage of monstrosities Hidetaka Miyazaki has dreamt up this time along the way. Last night I started Dark Souls 3's second and final offering of DLC and welcomed the lead butterflies back with open arms. 

The Ringed City—which can only be accessed when you've offed the base game's four Lords of Cinder and have successfully powered through its previous Ashes of Ariandel add-on—is thought to be the Souls series' last ever outing. Given Ariandel somewhat failed to live up to the post-launch standards set by previous series instalments, much rests on this one's shoulders as far as closing the series is concerned. 

I've only clocked a couple of hours so far, and while I've enjoyed butting heads with its new monsters—I spent an inordinate amount of time outrunning the lightning-firing angels, seriously—and its first major Demon Prince boss, the true star of the show up to this point has been its Dreg Heap and Earthen Peak Ruins settings themselves.

Setting in the Dark Souls series has been discussed almost as much as its brutally-unforgiving difficulty, its huge variety of equipment loadouts, and its fascinating open-ended lore. The original Dark Souls is a masterpiece in level design, creating a sprawling interconnected world where even the most incompatible of environments are weaved together with wonderful precision—and the absence of fast-travel teleportation until the latter stages of the game lends this fluent puzzle credibility.  Players are often forced to weigh up the pros and cons of venturing in certain directions against both their Soul Level and the enemies housed in certain areas, which only highlights how important its layout, and an understanding of such, is. 

As deftly outlined by YouTube fellow Hamish Black in his series Writing On Games, part of what makes the original Dark Souls' setting so important is its ability to portray both physical in-game ascent and descent in its earlier stages as themes. Ascension, says Black, is rewarding while descending into its depths stands to illuminate how unforgiving it can be. Black even suggests the way in which the ringing of the first bell compares with game's descent into Blighttown can make or break you—that it can determine whether or not you are a Dark Souls player at all.

This claim is stretching a little too far for me, but I do agree that the way the original Souls leverages ascent and, crucially, descent as concepts and mechanics is fantastic, so much so I'm not sure Dark Souls 2 could ever have bettered it. 

It didn't in my eyes, and an over-reliance on fast-travel and maps which just did not fit well together resulted in a world that feels jarring. Each arena is well designed in its own right, however too often feels detached from what preceded it. The game's Earthen Peak, for example, leads you upwards through a labyrinth of windmills and tunnels that overlook the Harvest Valley below—but when you reach the Iron Keep beyond, it's surrounding by rivers of molten lava.

Dark Souls 3, with Miyazaki back in charge, goes a long way to restoring this sense of cartographic wonder—with destinations that compliment its lore and again play with the ascent/decent idea—dragging players seamlessly from the Profaned Capital to Anor Londo; from Farron Keep to Archdragon Peak and everywhere else along the way.  

Within a universe that operates in cycles, where history is bound to repeat and reinterpret itself, what I've played so far of The Ringed City is a masterstroke in underscoring the end of the line. We're thrust into the "mangled remnants from every age and every land", as it steers us ever-downward into a world folding in on itself. Looking at it, nothing makes sense but, as it depicts remnants of individual past worlds all forced together, why should it? 

Now, we've gone beyond anything we've ever known. And where the Kiln of the First Flame was once recognised as the end of the line, it instead marks the peak of where we are now. The MC Escher-like backdrops of the Dreg Heap depict worlds long-forgotten as we make our way towards the lowest point of the Souls universe, and their impossible architecture and perspective serve to accentuate how absurd and futile each passing journey towards linking the flame really is. 

This is the ultimate descent and, despite only being accessible once you've finished everything else, this DLC is as unforgiving as it gets. Even beyond the angels which spew incessant showers of lightning or curse magic from above, the swamp-dwelling and brutally-strong Harald Legion Knights, or the three-tiered Demon boss fights, the world itself is designed in such a way that it's an absolute slog shuttling successfully between its bonfires. This may be the Souls series' last outing but it's going down swinging. And despite its difficulty, it's blooming gorgeous. 

I may only two or so hours in, but I've fallen in love with The Dreg Heap already and am bound for The Ringed City next. I guess this is my last chance to Git Gud, as they say, but, if history really is doomed to repeat itself in the Souls world, I reckon I've got a few more trips to the bonfire left in me yet.

Hey, remember how much of a pain it was to access the DLC area of the original Dark Souls? Well, From Software has mellowed over the years, and getting to Dark Souls 3's The Ringed City DLC is actually pretty easy. You'll need to have finished the previous expansion, Ashes of Ariandel, but otherwise accessing the bonfires that'll take you to the new area is very simple.

In fact, there are two bonfires you can use to access it. One is a new bonfire behind where the player spawns in the Kiln of the First Flame (ie, the final boss arena in vanilla Dark Souls 3), pictured below:

The second is found where the Sister Friede battle takes place in the Ashes of Ariandel area. Again, this is right behind where the player spawns at the Sister Friede bonfire:

If you're not seeing the bonfires in either of these places, chances are you've either a) not purchased the content b) not updated your game files or c) not completed Ashes of Ariandel. 

While getting to The Ringed City's new areas is easy, completing it will not be. I hope you like being shot at from above!